


take a step back and look at what you've lost

by willthrowhands



Series: therefore, elsewhere [3]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: :], Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts, TommyInnit is Not Okay (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit-centric (Video Blogging RPF), and also he has no friend and no disc and also no hope rip, basically what if tommy moves back to pogtopia and thinks about sad stuff, but he's alive.... for now, but like... lowkey, dream be getting away in this one huh, i promise in the next fic imma punt that green mofo emotionally... as emotionally as it gets i guess, i sincerely mean that i wrote this at 1am, kinda of both obviously and somewhat vaguely, no beta we die like hot girl, this is angsty!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:42:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28827624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willthrowhands/pseuds/willthrowhands
Summary: and when you look, you think the view is horrible.[aka: tommy moves back into pogtopia, post-doomsday. alone.]
Relationships: Tubbo & Tommyinnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: therefore, elsewhere [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098614
Comments: 131
Kudos: 685





	1. go back

**Author's Note:**

> skjlahfljkdghs i wrote this instead of sleeping. ill probably like. mcheckking overhaul this entire thing tommorow idk lol  
> Update: Added some stuff lol. Next chapter: PLOT. just a little bit :]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and so, tommy walks away, alone.

1.

All Tommy can smell is the smoke. The ground rumbles beneath his floors, and his ears are ringing, and his heart is pounding in his hollow, empty body, and all he can smell is the smoke.

He's vaguely aware of Dream, Dream telling him that he's not done yet, not had his fun yet, that their little game isn't over. Tommy disagrees with this sentiment. Looking among the rubble, the ground absolutely shredded, the buildings beyond existence, the history and memories strewn across what was left, aflame, he thinks that it’s pretty close to _an_ end, now. Not a happy one, for sure. Not after _(... green, light, fire, can't move, can't stop thinking, and now you wish you had-_ )... not after this. Not this.

He closes his eyes and breaths in. It smells like smoke and ash, and he has nothing left here now.

(Distantly, fireworks pop in the background. Techno is screaming, shouting angrily, and so was he but his voice pewters out, his eyes widen, a blur of green, fire and smoke, a blast - and so he is left with his final mistake. 

Techno claims that Tommy is selfish, and he disagrees. It’s not selfishness in the nature that he desires to take - he exists to _be_ and solely that. To claim otherwise is to be ignorant - you cannot take those parts away from him. Dream had tried, and dare Tommy think it, it had worked in some manner - what had made Tommy a problem in the eyes of others, what had made Tommy a threat to Dream, what had made Tommy _Tommy_ \- was all the same thing. And so it is evident, Dream’s efforts, in the way what had made him Tommy had been gouged out bit by bit, with every explosion, every hole, in the sour taste in his mouth, the way his eyes felt itchy and dry and all he could feel was the buzzing exhaustion that crowded his brain, the way the smoke filled his lungs in a manner so familiar that sometimes he forgot. 

It’s evident in the aftermath, in the form of the pillar that loomed over what could have been his graveyard, in the way that he tries to piece himself together but he doesn’t have the pieces he needs because he is made of holes, some like arrow marks, some like L’manberg, most like worn-out beach shores made out of sanded down rock and time, and so he sews himself back together instead and calls himself w(hole).

Techno calls him selfish, and Tommy disagrees - Techno is the selfish one. Which of them stood, caught in the act as one would say, in the midst of their most selfish choice yet? It wasn’t Tommy, no, not Tommy, who held a lapful of regrets and a back full of decisions he never made. It wasn’t Tubbo, who threw himself into the fray, time and time again, selfless in the way he made himself useless and let everyone pull him apart for the sake of peace, and was torn for it [- _mmy holds his friend, his fingers like ash, bloodied face and a tired smile, and this wasn’t worth it but he never asked for this all he wanted was-_ ]. It was the acclaimant himself - bold in the way his armor glimmered in the midst of the rising smoke, his sword pointed in the teen’s direction, his act of revenge prominent in the form of the hole that hollowed out L’manberg. 

And so, he took what he wanted, and left Tommy with less than nothing left.)

And so, Tommy walks away from the rubble, some days later, emptier than the crater. 

(There is dirt under his fingernails, and dirt piled up under the tree with the jukebox and the bench, _their_ bench, and none of it belongs there. He should be walking away with his best friend. 

In one world, he does. Maybe they live in the house behind it. Maybe they walk away, but they're together, at least, through it all.

In this one, he doesn't. It's just Tommy, and Tommy alone this time, and so he walks away from the crater, he walks away their bench, and nothing in his life had ever sounded quieter.)

  
  
  


2.

It’s dark, in the caverns, when he arrives. There is a faint feeling of spiderwebs coating the walls, and he can feel the occasional lump of a button, as he feels his way deeper and deeper. It was never home, in the way that he wanted it to be. Pogtopia was meant to be a transitional place, the inbetween before getting their home back. And so he waited his hours, alone in the caverns with his declining brother, patience in the silence. And when things had fallen apart around him, when his brother had gripped him by the shoulders and claimed their villainhood, the hours later he spent in the ravine didn’t feel like home. It shouldn’t have, and it didn’t, because it was never home in the way there was family, and there was safety, and Pogtopia had neither of those. 

Neither was Logsteadshire.

Instead, they were his waiting hours. The most patient he has ever been, the “moment longer” moments, where time passed by like the world’s longest snail race and he barely held the strings together by the fray, and so he waited. 

(Waiting has never yielded him any fruit, though. Waiting through Pogtopia landed him in the fray of explosions and Withers and betrayal and betrayal and betrayal - and the only thing he ever received was the holes that made up the land and the tired people on it. Waiting through Logsteadshire landed him… well. It nearly landed him on the ground, in the worst way possible, if you would. And now he is made up of all the waiting moments, and it’s when he realizes this that he begins to relish in the consequences of his actions because at least _those_ \- at least those were deserved.

And so when he goes to add the meagre supplies he’d collected for their last ditch effort, Doomsday approaching, that he finds it all blasted apart, that he finds nothing but irony in it. Of course, someone would take it upon themselves to level revenge, to inflict punishment, on _this_ of all things, during _this moment_ when he needs them not to, the most. Because fate hates heroes, and Tommy is no hero, but everyone blames him for everything anyway.)

He breathes in the stale air and lingers in the nostalgia. His eyes burn, even shut, and his head buzzes with the exhaustion. His fingers tremble, cold and numb against the stone, and he isn’t sure how he’s still standing. Faintly, he can hear the groaning of mobs, and he moves forward.

There is green lingering in the back of his head, and it won’t go away. It’s never there, but it’s always going to be gone in the way that it leaves a space in his heart. It’s grief in the form of absence, and he puts it aside, because he knows if he doesn’t, all the stitches will rip open and he’ll come apart worse and he won’t have the energy to pull himself together again. He thinks, when he’s finally ready to come to terms with it, it’ll really be the endgame for him, and there’ll be no coming back from that.

(Pogtopia was never home, because he was afraid to make it such. Because if it were home, then home wasn’t safe, and home was empty and unsafe and lonely and all he wanted was his family back. He never gets that.

He doesn’t have that now, either, but he’s made his peace with it too. It’s still not home, still a transitional space between then and now, but the future is empty for him. He’s still in those waiting hours, but he’s not sure what it is he’s waiting for at this point. Maybe it’s for the moment he fulfills Techno’s story and takes the plunge. Maybe it’s the moment that he gets back what he’s lost. Maybe it’s the moment his tormenter finally completes his story for the third time. Maybe it’ll be good. 

He’s not sure what he’s looking forward to, most. He’s not sure of anything these days.)

Somewhere in Pogtopia, there is a boy trying to be bigger and braver than he’s ever been before, while his big brother falls apart at the seams. There’s a juxtaposition there, somewhere, some sort of irony in how they are like the coats they wear, in the way that Tommy leaves his behind and Wilbur rips his apart. Somewhere, sometime, they gather everyone in the ravine, in the way it would’ve been home if not for the looming date of war on the horizon. 

This is not that time. Now, it is just Tommy, alone, no coats, no family, and nothing left for him anywhere else. These are the memories he’s left with now. Logsteadshire is filled with panic and self-reflections made in warped mirrors, Techno’s cabin tastes bitter in his mouth, and L’manberg was fated for ruin the day it came to be, and so he settles for second-best and moves back into Pogtopia. 

He starts by getting rid of the buttons.

  
  
  


3.

Now, he has nothing but time on his hands, and nobody to share them with. Not Tu- not his friend, left in the ruins of what had been the land of both of their greatest and worst moments together. Not even Dream, sporadically and horribly as he once was, had shown up. 

Tommy’s not sure if this was because nobody knew where he was, or if it was that they all decided to leave him be - the same way they’d done before, when he’d been exiled (and in retrospect, not even in the first exile, did they bother, when it was just him and Wilbur, and maybe he resents them a little bit, for that. But they’ve proven their worth and his worth to them in their actions, and if they chose not to visit him, that was their decision, and that was that.) And so he makes do with the silence. It’s bitter and reminiscent of everything he pushed back, the moments in between, and he itches for the discs, but he’d given them up for everything and now he has nothing, and so he lingers in the silence. 

And maybe, he deserves it a little, the silence. It’s haunting, the echoes that ring through the ravine, the flinches he makes at every surprising noise, and every moment he wishes that there was something else to fill it - music, bees buzzing, Tubbo talking, something about Blue, a monologue, an apology, anything at all - he feels the hollow noises in his chest and he lingers in the pain of it all. It’s a constant reminder, one he’ll never let himself forget, for as long as he’s strong enough to remain in the overworld. 

The silence is the consequence of caring. Of having cared, once. Of wanting to care. And now he has nothing left to show for it.

And now he has nothing but those patient hours, and nothing to fill them with. He starts with the buttons, and when he clears them up, he moves into the emptied out rooms, the ones littered with chests and crafting benches abandoned alike, and he sorts them through. There are so many little things discarded in the storage spaces, dead saplings and broken tools alike, and he delicately moves them all. There is so much junk, so much trash, barely anything useful among what they’d hastily thrown together in a resource grabbing panic, or when they had nothing else on hand, and thought not much of it then, now all clutter.

He gets rid of nothing.

And there are so many other forgotten things. He climbs the stairs, and nearly trips off of them. His heart races, momentarily, staring down from the rickety wooden bridge from so far above the cavernous bottom, and it’s for a moment, he feels alive. The adrenaline ebbs away moments later, and the same dull, empty crater that hollowed itself out with every explosion, widened open once more. 

Techno once joked about childproofing the place. He’d gone and done it too, at some point, with hastily made dirt railings. It didn’t stop Tubbo from falling off all the time, though, as clumsy as the other boy had been. It didn’t stop Wilbur from tearing them down, at some point, and promptly proving Techno’s point by falling off moments later. They joked about it then, the necessity of baby-proofing and railings, but it was months later, that Tommy really acknowledged why they’d really been there. 

It’s now, that Tommy knows why Wilbur had removed them.

He knows he should be more worried for himself, but everything moves so slow, nowadays, and he’s simultaneously dangerless and in the most danger he’s ever been in before. It’s somehow better than Logsteadshire, and yet, somehow, _more_ than Logsteadshire. He’s not standing above any lava, there is nobody to goad, there is nothing but the heights of the ledges and the stalactites and stalagmites and he’ll never remember which is which (despite Wilbur’s once many explanations and little rhymes he’d never listened to and he’ll never hear again) but one of which would be his last view and the other would be what skewered him, if he fell. 

Ands so he occupies his time, instead. He moves away from the ledge, but every day, it gets harder to do so, but he gives himself tasks to follow anyway. He rebuilds the storage rooms, he makes a proper room for himself and calls it temporary (like once before), he dusts the library he’d made once. Once, he sits down in an attempt to add to the library. He almost does, to, he opens an empty book, quill in hand, ink dripping on the page, but all he can think about is….

(smoke rising from the crater, green and red, the laughter of an absolute madman, revenge in the form of destruction and disproportionate distribution, his selfishness, his awfulness, his friend on the obsidian platforming, his friend down below, everyone turning their backs on him, everyone looking down on him, giving away the disc, turning his back on his brother, everyone turning their backs on him, the thread unravels before he has a chance to catch it and-)

… he thinks about everything, and the page remains blank. He can’t bring himself to write anything. He wonders if Doomsday would be better off unrecorded. He’s not planning to come back to it anyway.

Tommy wonders when history stops becoming history, in what had been recorded in the words on the page becomes only what words have been printed on the hearts of the witnesses. He knows they’re all different narratives, and their history has only one language, and wonders who’d write it, after he went.

He wonders how long it would take for everyone to forget him, too.

4.

Techno’s potato farm has been left untouched, he notes, when he enters the room. There’s something colder in this room than other rooms, and he reminds himself to set up a better torch system at some point. It’s evident that the potatoes have been all left to their own devices, and so they’ve taken it upon themselves to all wither away. 

Dried-up stems poke out of crumbly soil, and a faint smell of rotting lingers in the stagnant air. He sighs. It’s no use trying to salvage what had been left from the farm - most of what had once been war efforts had been left behind in the chaos strewn by its owner. And so whatever had been once gathered from the farms had either been used up, or left unattended. And whatever had been left unattended, set itself to rot.

(A part of him is glad that it’s been untouched. Mostly, it’s because it means nobody’s been here for weeks on end. Nobody’s come here since the end of the war between them and Schlatt, and then with the remains of L’manberg needing attention and repair - and mostly because none of them considered Pogtopia a place in need of attention or care. It was their midway point, the inbetween days in the tides of war. For him, it was the same, but more than that. They might not have returned for those reasons, but he refrained for more than that - whatever it was about Pogtopia, had him hesitant to return. He thinks it might have to do with the bitterness of the place, the way the cold overwhelmed him then, Wilbur’s last place of residence. It felt wrong, the idea of going back there. So he abandoned everything there, and hadn’t looked back since. And so, Pogtopia was forgotten by its originators, and everybody who’d passed through since. It’s evident in the stale air, in the unlit torch grid, in the rotted potatoes. It’s evident in the lack of visitors, wanted and unwanted.

But an even smaller part of him, one that he’d never admit to ever again, the same part of him that set George’s house aflame for reasons more than he’ll ever confess, the same part of him that angled him into the ocean instead of land, whispers that he’s glad these potatoes have been untouched, for the sake of their caretaker. Techno had taken such pride in his hardworking efforts, then, time and time again. He put his all into everything he’d ever done, whether it was combat or farming, and it always yielded. It yielded in the form of all the weaponry he’d gathered, in the form of the endless withers he had on hand. It yielded in the form of all the potatoes he farmed, and now, it yields nothing at all. He can’t help but feel a little vindictive, as he rips apart the farm, shoveling it up.

(He stands before the ruins of the place that hadn’t been his home for a while, holding a friend who hadn’t been his friend for a while, in front of a brother who hadn’t been a brother for a while. He is told that he is selfish, that this was somehow earned, and it’s in this moment, with smoke rising (he can’t breathe - it might not be from the smoke in his lungs, it might be the crater that had formed in the space of his chest instead in one swift explosion, and he cannot breathe-), and he is told that he earned it (what is it he earned? tell him, honestly, what about this is absolute reciprocity? tell him, truthfully, do you hate him? everyone else seems to, nowadays, and now, he has no one else. did he ever have anyone in the first place?), and he is told that it’s funny.

He is told it is funny, and no one is laughing. Well, no, he is, now, but it’s still not funny. It’s the kind of laughter that bursts out of disbelief, in the moments after. No one is around to hear it anyway, not even the body in his hands. He's laughing, and laughing, and he’ll keep laughing because he’ll never cry.

From everyone, he is given a metaphorical shovel, and a literal hole, and told to bury what he had left.

What Tommy does have, he buries under the tree next to the bench.)

In the soil remains, he plants carrots instead.

(It'll take time, like the potatoes left unattended, and it'll only take time, but soon there'll be nothing left in the soil under the tree. It's a horrible fate, to be erased twice and forgotten. Tommy tries not to think about it, because he knows once he starts, he won't stop until he's buried himself too.) 

5.

It’s sometime later in the week, he finds Wilbur’s old jacket. Well, one of them. It’s not the same one that he had worn to his own death date, because that one is in Phil’s (not Dad, he’s not sure if they’re even family anymore, if he has rights to call Phil his dad, and by this point, he’s not sure if he wants to call Phil his dad anymore-) hands, and he doesn’t think Phil will relinquish it for anything.

(He won’t say anything, but the jacket feels more like a trophy that Phil keeps nowadays. He’d seen no hide nor hair of it anywhere since Wilbur had died, and he knows it’s there, and that Phil will never give it up for anything, a reminder of what had happened - but a darker part of Tommy thinks that it’s less a reminder of Phil’s mistake, and more a reminder that Wilbur had died. Now, he thinks to himself bitterly, that every time Phil sees the jacket, wherever it is, he thinks he got his revenge. He and Techno, justified and righteous and somewhere in their little cabin in the woods, happily ever after. He only hopes that everytime Phil sees the jacket, he sees Ghostbur right after. Ghostbur can be inadvertently vicious in his naivety sometimes, and so he hopes that Phil never goes a day without Ghostbur.

… Who needs Tommy, after all?)

It’s just a normal jacket. It’s brown, a little dusty, and when he shakes it off, he notices its general… lack of wear. It’s not something Wilbur wore often. Tommy’s not sure when Wilbur had stopped changing his jackets, but he’s not sure about many things during their exile. The time seemed to stretch on forever, those exile memories, but they are jumbled in the effort to forget.

A shiver runs through him. It’s cold in the ravine. It’s cold everywhere these days. It’s a cold that’s settled its way into his bones and joints and empty empty heart, a cold that never leaves in the warmth of a roaring fire.

He puts the jacket on.

6.

It’s on a Wednesday that he builds an apiary. 

(Two weeks later, Phil shows up, Ghostbur in tow. But first, he pretends he can put himself back together, and then afterwards, he finally stops lying to himself. 

He stops lying to everyone else, too.)


	2. in place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and so, Tommy settles in Pogtopia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: a lot of suicidal ideation... tommy is not having a good time rn....
> 
> on that note, my favorite bookmark has to be: "im not ready to read the rest of this and claim to be ok"  
> you bet you won't be after this chappy 😎
> 
> EDIT: added more lol, i cant s t. op
> 
> EDIT 2: just realized i still had some stuff here i forgot to delete... h
> 
> EDIT 3: some minor changes.... there might be a bit added later, when i start meshing out chapter 3 more

6.

It’s during one of his rarer trips to the surface that he gets the feeling he’s being followed. 

He turns around the corner and waits. The footsteps draw nearer, and it’s the noise that lets him know that whoever this is, isn’t Technoblade or Phil (or Dream for that manner) - because if it were them, he wouldn't know until their sword was already in his back. So he waits, silently behind the corner, cold hands gripping the base of his torch. He hears the metal clanking draw close, and he makes the corner turn in one swift motion.

Jack Manifold startles in the sudden light. “Woah, sorry, I didn’t mean to - _Tommy?_ ” He looks surprised, wariness turned recognition in his eyes, and Tommy has to grant him that, at the very least. Tommy can’t recognize himself in reflections, nowadays. His hair has grown long over his eyes, curling down the nape of his neck in blond tangles. (Every time he moves to tie it up, he can feel the thickness of the braid in his hand, the weaving strands between his fingers, and so he leaves it be). His skin is ghostly pale, sunken in with a type of exhaustion that stems from loss, and if Jack didn’t know any better, he’d probably think that Tommy was a specter. But the truth of the matter remains in front of him, an undeniable sight. Tommy looks back at him, dull blue eyes under pale lashes, thin fingers wrapped tightly around the torch handle, and he is quiet.

(Jack will never admit it, but the silence is much more eerie here, now, than it ever was back in the ruins of L’manberg. He can’t help the chill that runs up his spine when Tommy turns to him slowly, something unrecognizable and unraveled in his eyes, visage barely human, a pale hollowed out face bright in the torchlight.

He doesn’t regret what he did to L’manberg - or really, what he had let happen. Techno and Dream had done the most and only damage, ultimately, and he had reveled in its ruination, but only for what it meant to the one person who had earned it every time. He can’t bring himself to regret what he plans to do Tommy (yet).

What he doesn’t consider, yet, is that Tommy is barely alive enough for it to be called ‘murder’. Niki would call it revenge, and neither of them would admit the guilt afterwards. Techno wouldn’t call it anything, and he’ll mourn in the same subtextual manner he did for his prior brother. Dream would call it a disappointment, but whether it was something he’d disagree with is left unanswered. Tubbo would have called it hateful, once, and would have grieved his friend afterwards with every tear he had left to spare, but now he is nothing but dirt under a tree, so he gets no say in what it’s called.)

(Tommy would call it gratuitous.)

  
  


Tommy remembers Jack Manifold. Jack stood next to Niki, when Tommy tried to rally their last ditch efforts and received nothing but wrought and ruin for it. Jack stood next to Niki, when she had spit back at him, eyes full of unyielding rage and hurt. His eyes had betrayed nothing then, obscured by the colorful plastic of his glasses. They betray nothing now, as he shifts side to side, uncomfortably in the awkward silence.

Tommy doesn’t know what Jack wants though, so he asks. “What are you doing here?” 

It comes out flat, more of a statement then a question, a raspy quality that came from weeks of disuse. Jack winces at the rough sound. Tommy stares at him unapologetically in his stead. Jack collects himself, something hostile almost, in his stance, hand poised over his belt. He’s come dressed for war, anyways, but the question is asked. “Have… Have you seen Tubbo?”

It’s an innocent question, poised in its naivety and evident lack of knowledge, but it shoots straight anyway, and Tommy feels frozen where he stands. How does he answer this?

“No, I haven’t seen him?” That’s an outright lie in the form of the most truthful response he could offer. No, he hadn't seen him, because the last time he’d seen Tubbo, they stood together in the aftermath of the destruction, the smoke reminiscent of every other time, of every moment in Logsteadshire, of every moment after Wilbur’s choice, and they held each other, one falling limper with every passing moment, together again - the worst president and the worst friend, and they fell apart once more for the last time. Because the last time he’d seen Tubbo, he was putting dirt over his corpse, wishing it was him instead. Because the last time he saw Tubbo, his accusing face loomed over his figure in the darkness of every nightmare in the quiet caverns of Pogtopia, behind Niki, behind Techno, behind George, behind Wilbur himself, silent and accusatory, and on _Notch_ , would that answer be a truthful lie.

“Yeah, he’s just out.” It’s the truth he wants, the truth he desperately wakes to every morning, the moment before he’s reminded of what reality has taken from him. It’s the most hopeful answer, the best outcome dimension where Tubbo is somewhere outside, looking at bees and or some shit, and then he’ll come home, and they’ll laugh, and sure there’s no discs or Wilbur or Niki and Fundy or anybody at all, but it’s _them_ , together, and maybe they’re preparing some sort of counter-strike against Dream, or messing with Techno, or making nuisances of themselves and denying it outright, but at least they’re _together_. 

But it’s a lie, an outright untruth in the most fraudulent response, and he might wish it to be true, and he might dream of it often, but the reality is that there is no good outcome to that response. If that’s what he answers Jack with, the next thing Jack will ask could be, “where?” or worse, “when?”, and then Tommy would have to keep up the pretense, the pretender that never was, and Tommy has never been good at lying to anyone but himself.

So he goes with, “No.” It’s simple, snippy and short, and somewhat rude. It’s what he does best, then, and now too, and so Jack’s posture goes from hesitant to relaxed. The answer he offers is familiar, not in what it foretells, but in how it is presented. 

“No need to be so rude,” Jack shoots back, as if he has the energy to keep up, the same shouty response, the same oddly confident posture, posturing between the two of them, the same old Tommy that hadn’t been hollowed out from behind, a mask worn by the worst liar, granted by his best puppeteers, and so he lets the silence sit between them instead. It’s awkward, when he doesn’t respond, and he can see it in the way Jack shifts, antsy, waiting, and he provides no relief for it. 

Jack breaks it first. “Let… Let me know if you see him, alright?” 

  
  


Tommy watches him go, retreating into the dark, and within him, the crater widens.

  
  
  
  


7.

It’s on a Wednesday that he builds an apiary. 

He makes an effort toward the aesthetic, for once. The apiary is cobbled together in a meaningful effort to make something out of what his memory and imagination form, and he thinks it’s a little crooked in the placement of the beehives and the pattern of the flowers, but it’s green and vibrant and there is more color than he’s seen for awhile. 

He makes windows, little sunbeams entering from warped glass. Little openings for the bees to pass through, in and out of their little haven, and he thinks that Tubbo would’ve liked it, even if he’d be a little critical of the design and efficiency. But ultimately, it’s not much of a farm, and so it doesn’t have to be built like one. Tommy will probably never have use for the honey that’ll be produced in this farm. It’s entirely likely he’ll never be able to step foot in it again, which makes its construction a little purposeless. 

And so, he spruces it up with other flowers - marigolds and mint and many many roses, vibrant reds and oranges, and green green stems. He knows if he had made this anytime earlier, Tubbo would have absolutely chewed him out for the flower choices. He might’ve sniffed over the box positioning a bit, and the endless amounts of unnecessary cobblestone, and its usefulness, but now he won’t, because he never complained outright to Tommy’s face, and now he’ll never get to.

It’s not a farm - It’s not much of a memorial either, but it’s the best he can do.

  
  
  


8.

Creepers are his least favorite mob, he decides, on one failed caving attempt. He ends up returning earlier than planned, empty handed, the flash still blinding in his eyes, the bang still ringing in his ears, the rubble and smoke strangling him. His heart doesn’t stop racing even when he’s finally barricaded himself in Wilbur’s old room, not when he’s managed to stop shaking enough to wrap his hands, not when he tries to walk himself through what Techno had him run through once before. ( _What are five things you can see, Tommy?_ Techno’s baritone breaks through the spiraling, everything spinning faster as he plummets through the earth, transparent, and he can’t stop choking, but he can still count, cobblestone, snow, house, Techno, Techno’s face over his, twisted in some fashion of concern, Techno’s braid a foriegn weight on him somewhere, if only he could formulate enough of a body to describe where--) Not until he is certain that all he can hear is the silence, that there is no one else. 

Creepers are not the ugliest mob, no, that category is filled by a multitude of others before it. Months ago, the only thing Creepers were, was a nuisance. Phil had once begrudged them for littering his lawn with holes, the annoying things only hissing when they’d gotten close enough, a problem that often ended in singed hairs and a skipped heartbeat. 

Eret was the first to start the chain, when L’manberg went up for the first time. Suddenly, Creepers were more echoes than mobs, but still nuisances all the same. They had laughed, then, when they flinched at the bang, and held their silence in the aftermath. No one would ever talk about it - it was a secret they all shared.

Tubbo was the first to step out of the chain - he couldn’t stand to be around those mobs much anymore. The scent of gunpowder, the faintest bang-- these small things were enough to set him off. Tommy remembered the flare of anger that welled within him every time, that Tubbo collapsed in on himself every time one of them got too close to creepers, or generally, anything, in the closest weeks after. He didn’t understand it quite himself; the explosions he remembered were bitter, angry memories, and so they fueled him forward instead.

But now, he can’t stand them either, in the same manner Tubbo hadn’t, once. He understands what it means to smell the gunpowder air and feel the paralyzing fear, what it means to be blinded and deafened all at once. He pities and resents it both - the aftermath of other decisions that have once again, ruined him in a way other than death. It is a repeating story, in the opening of walls, the press of a button, an obsidian grid in the sky - a story told from his witnessing narrative.

What’s worse, more than that, is that he’ll never get to tell Tubbo about it. He’ll never be able to whisper the little fears that nobody else wanted to hear from him, fearfully himself, that he held about these things. He’ll never get to ask Tubbo for his experiences again, he’ll never hold him in his arms again and they’ll never enjoy music together because there is no music now, and there is no Tubbo. He gave them both away, and so he suffers in Wilbur’s room alone for it.

(Creepers are his least favorite mob, he decides, when he goes up to the surface for wood. The bright, vivid green that appears every so often, silently in the woods, is reminiscent of worser moments, and his fingers never leave the straps of his armor because of it. He hates it, that feeling of helplessness that follows him like the mob itself, that he renders himself to voluntarily and yet not. He hates that the green is so familiar, that his body becomes unresponsive to his own fears when he sees it, that he relaxes so easily, and the armour becomes so heavy, and he is trapped in his own skin.

What’s worse, more than that, is that he never got to tell Tubbo the full story. He’s tried to talk about it before, but the words won’t come out right, and all he can say-- whisper, really-- is that it was “fucked up”, and nothing more than that. Instead, he shows it in every other way-- the way he stiffens when grabbed, how he freezes when yelled at, the way he lingers on every edge, looking down. Techno was the one who had heard the most from him, but ultimately, understood the least. Tubbo on the other hand, heard from him the least, and might’ve understood him the most, once, but now it’s too late. They didn’t have time, then, and now, he’ll never tell anyone at all.)

  
  
  


9.

Jack comes back. He does that often, now, lingering uncertainly near Pogtopia, but never quite close enough. Tommy’s not sure if he even knows where Pogtopia _is_ , but he’s not sure of much nowadays. He’s sure that Jack might have been there, once, but it’s not something he remembers. 

Tommy is… secretly grateful for the company, even though he’s always keenly aware of the sword that clanks against Jack’s armor. It shines, shimmering purple with enchantments, sharp without effort, and he knows it’d be able to cut through him like butter. Once, he wielded such a sword, swinging it wildly as he charged into battle.

Nowadays, all he can think about is being on the other end. Would it hurt, cutting like a papercut spanning his ribs, or would it hurt like fire, the explosive bang a firework blast offers as it burns through anything it flies against? Would the pain throb in place, like every time he’s stubbed his toe against the unforgiving stone stairs in the ravine, or would it spread, like the black marks of the withering effect, decaying relentlessly, an all-encompassing pain? 

It’s something he finds himself lingering on often. If he lets that creeper come too close, would he break apart like L’manberg had under unrelenting fire? If he lets the skeleton shoot him, would he go underwater, like he had once, an arrow embedded in his pounding heart, lungs filling with water-- would he drown on land? If he gives up, would he turn to rot and dust like forgotten potatoes, in the soil? Or if he gives up, would it be from the ledge, like from the obsidian walls, a patchwork country, like from that tower above a ruined vacation, like the grid above a crater nation, like the bridges across the ravine, far above the ground and high enough to make it hurt?

Sometimes, that little thought lingers, louder and longer than it ever has any rights to, and he resents himself for it. Is he broken for listening, for _wanting_ to listen? Is he strong, for outlasting it? Is it some sort of weakness in him, that he never keeps his word and never follows through with it? He stands over the crater, and Wilbur’s dead. He stands over the crater, and Logsteadshire is dead. He stands over the crater and L’manberg’s gone. And now, he stands over the crater within himself, open wide and cavernous, threatening to swallow him whole, and he wants to step off. He doesn’t, but he wants to, _oh_ he wants to.

Jack may not like him, and he might not like Jack. They might not be friends, but it’s a company he didn’t know he wanted. It’s water in a hole, substance replacement, and he knows they might never come to anything close to friendship, but that’s okay. Tommy’s lost the rights to friendship the moment he set his own aflame. And so, it’s a one-sided mutual companionship, where Tommy basks in the presence of another, even though he will never admit to it, and Jack stands behind him contemplatively, hand on the hilt of his glorious blade, armour shimmering, eyes hidden by plastic frames. If Tommy closes his eyes, he can pretend that he’s anyone else too.

And if Tommy lets Jack see the openings to the apiary from the outside, where the bees pass through hastily formed vents, the faintest splash of color visible through hastily made windows? If he lets Jack come to his own conclusions? That’s between Tommy and the silence that holds his secrets. They play pretend, the two of them: Jack, in that he’s not there to “slay the dragon”, and Tommy, in that Tubbo still lived.

  
  
  





Sometime later, Phil shows up with Ghostbur in tow. Tommy isn’t there when they enter, but he is there when he bursts into Wilbur’s room, another caving attempt gone wrong. The two of them startle at the sudden movement. Phil doesn’t register him at first, and that’s fair. He’s barely resemblant of the old him, his hair long and tangled, framing his ghostly face, eyes always rimmed red with weeks of no sleep and grief, and so it takes a while. He can tell when the sight registers, because Phil’s eyes widen, in surprise, and then darken with acknowledgement. 

He doesn’t think the sword angled in his direction would’ve changed if Phil had recognized him anyway.

“What are you doing here, Tommy?” Phil asks, but it comes across somewhat flatter than he thinks Phil meant it to. Tommy can’t remember the last time Phil started a conversation-- it’s always been him. But now, Tommy’s voice is beyond use, so he shrugs, his oversized coat lifting with his thin shoulders. Both of the other two’s eyes follow the movement. They’re here for something. ( _When aren’t they,_ he thinks bitterly. He lets them walk around in the quiet ravine, silence strong in the tension between them, father-figure and failed son. They want something, and he lets them walk around, but he isn’t kind, nor is he giving. That was Tubbo, once, and so he lets them sort through his hard work patiently, if only for that.)

They want the coat he wears. They’re reviving Wilbur today, they say. 

Wilbur. He remembers Wilbur. His older brother. His kind brother. His mad brother. Tommy wears Wilbur’s coat, these days-- half out of necessity, half out of remembrance. Tommy remembers a time when he wanted to be like Wilbur, bold and charismatic in the way he painted his words; Wilbur, the ultimate orchestrator of their L’manbergian symphony; Wilbur, who he’d followed into the ravine like Pied Piper and his rats (well, just the one), and then watched fall apart. He remembers resenting Wilbur, afterwards, for what he’d put him through, for what he’d branded them, for how unapologetic he was for it all, for orchestrating his death in such an incomplete manner, leaving Tommy behind with a hole for a home and a hole in his heart. He resents Wilbur often, for haunting him afterwards, in the pieces of himself that he called “Ghostbur” and the pieces of him that lingered throughout the night, unrelenting in his sleep, and painful in his wakefulness. He hated Wilbur, then, for leaving him with the hole beneath his feet and in his heart, for leaving without a single goodbye, for leaving him without telling him how to mourn.

Now, he wants to be like Wilbur, because he understands. He _gets it now_ , the loneliness you feel in the aftermath of loss, the way it burns into you, relentlessly, hurtfully, and all you want is for it to stop. The way loss turns into shock, disbelief, then the sparking rage and the plans, oh the plans, so many-- and then begging, the pleading, the regretting. The way loss melts into acceptance in the form of a type of sadness that runs so deep, you’ll feel like you’ve never felt any other way before, a sadness that blinds you, that slows you, and you live in the syrup of the aftermath. He understands now, what it’s like to have things ripped away from you hopelessly, a lack of control on his own life despite his desperate destructive attempts to reclaim what he’d lost, the way he fails every time. Phil told him he’ll understand one day. Techno told him he’s selfish. Tubbo told him he’s selfish. Tommy tells himself he’s selfish, because that has to be why they all did those things to him: Niki, with rage in her eyes and the tree alight behind her, Eret, and their discomfort in the Doomsday speech, Dream ripping him away from L’manberg, dragging him away by the arm, Phil blowing his home apart. He doesn’t understand why, but he gets it now, why Wilbur did what he did, and he can accept that at the very least. He wants it too.

So Tommy shrugs off the coat and hands it to them wordlessly. It’s not like it’s helped much with the cold, these days.

And so, they leave the ravine.

  
  
  





They walk up to a podium, somewhere, in the ruins of L’manberg. Tommy can’t help every stumble he made over the rubble, the stone jutting out of the ground sporadically. To be honest the place was a mess, at best. He eyes the yawning crater in the middle, where buildings and ground alike had been caved in by unrelenting blasts of TNT and Withers floating about. Phil holds the coat, and Tommy trails behind the two of them pensively. He’s not sure why he followed. He’s … conflicted, would be one way to put it.

One part of him is joyful with the idea that Wilbur could come back. Because of Wilbur could come back, they’d get answer for it all, why he had left them so abruptly,a hole in all of their hearts that went unresolved, eating away at each and everyone of them in a manner of speaking, the ways somewhere driven to revenge and called it justified, in the way some simply moved on and out from what had become Wilbur’s memorial, the way some lingered instead, trying to repair the place to the best of their memories, and how all of them were never given a proper way to grieve him. 

Ghostbur made it hard to mourn him, anyway, because of what he represented. Because if you let yourself believe what you only saw, desaturates familiar curly hair and the same soulful eyes and his gentle expressions on Wilbur’s face, maybe you’d let yourself believe that it was him, too. And if he were, if it were Wilbur, what would be the point of grieving him? Why mourn him? Why build a grave for him? He was right there. It was a trap that Tommy himself had fallen for (and honestly, who could blame him? It was tommy after all who’d brought him into the conflict tommy who was there for the entirety of Pogtopia tommy who’d witnessed his downfall in the same breathe that he’d been blamed for L’Manberg inevitable destruction. It was tommy who had given everything to Wilbur’s word, that one night, when his brother had asked him to cherish L’Manberg and neither of them commented on the thick smell of smoke on the former. And so he had and then Wilbur blew it up and then Techno blew it up and then there was nothing left of that promise, because he had failed. He fails often, these days, in protecting what he cherishes, and so he earns this agony, and he can’t help the joy that comes with the idea, that he’d be getting his brother back.

A part of him says Wilbur would not be happy with being revived. There’s a speculative truth about this, half from what he remembers about his brother, during his final days - even if he didn’t know it at the time, the resolution for a resolution that Wilbur had held onto in the weeks leading up to his “chekhov's gun”, and from those memories, he’s sure of it. The other half is from his own experiences in the past month, every single day after he’d lost everything. It’s the silence in Pogtopia, the paranoia that comes with being betrayed time and time again, and then some, from people who thought it nothing more than a transaction, from people who genuinely hated what he stood for, or in the way he had slighted them, somehow. He thinks it’s unfair that they expect the equivalent exchange when they’ve all hurt him back equally, and demand his recompensation for it in the form of the martyrhood of what he cared for. 

And so, when he stays in Pogtopia, alone, he does not “lick his wounds'' the way he did the first night he’d been there, far back into his first exile, still full of righteous rage and impatient patience, the way Wilbur had, when he still had hope. Instead, he sits in silence, friendless and hopeless, with all the time in the world and no time at all, and he regrets what he’s lost in the way he wishes he could unknow it. It’s this, that he wishes that he had been resolute in his efforts the way Wilbur had been, that he’d let his own symphony finish the moment it was over. Instead, it’s drawn out beyond reason, and he waits his time in the ravine for his finale.

It’s from this, that he draws the conclusion that Wilbur wouldn’t have appreciated being revived.

(Another part of him says that Tubbo should’ve been the one with this opportunity, that Tommy should’ve jumped onto the bandwagon sooner, per say, should’ve spent more effort into looking for ways to bring him back. Like Wilbur, Tubbo died from his mistake, his misstep somewhere down the line, his inability to be anything but the ultimate bystander, but unlike Wilbur, Tubbo didn’t want to die. Tubbo had looked at him, eyes wide, shining with unshed tears, afraid, and he cried whereas Wilbur had smiled and laughed. Both of their faces haunt him indiscriminately anyway, because the nightmares don’t choose what he regrets, and he regrets them both.

However, this part of him is often drowned out, by the louder part that demands his own head on a platter, the other voice that whispers frantically, guiltily, that it should’ve been him all along, it should’ve been him by the button, should’ve been him on the pillar, should’ve been him on the other side of the rocket, and he listens helplessly, because ultimately, eventually, the two voices interlace in the way that they acknowledge that it should’ve been Tubbo here, instead, but what he has is himself and nothing else because of it.)

And so, he is silent, as he watches them scale the steps, standing bystander on one of the rock piles by what remained of the button room. Ghostbur begins the monologue, and Tommy becomes very aware of the audience behind him, in the form of Eret, who had guiltily followed them there, and Ranboo, who didn’t know what had played out, what was about to play out in a mockery of what had been his brother’s final moments, Fundy, who was watching, a son and his ghost of a father.

Ghostbur turns to him, coat pooling strangely on his semi-translucent frame, and says, “We’re trying to make it as realistic as possible, Tommy, you know…” His voice drifts off, and he turns to Phil, as if there’s something that he wants to say, but is unsure of, in its truthfulness to an amnesiac, to a witnesser of history. “You, you didn’t stand there, did you, Tommy?”

“Oh, you know. I watched it happen.” He says, and winces when his voice cracks halfway through. It sounds foriegn, the words from his mouth, for someone so used to the absence of it. It comes off strange, a whispery quality that doesn’t belong, never for someone of his caliber, and he can feel their eyes on him, so he looks away. He’s not wrong. In the moments between explosions, he watched as Wilbur turned to them, arms spread out in a grand gesture of conclusion, and wordlessly, as he moved his mouth, the distance too far to make out any sounds. And then, the back of his brown coat, and then the back of his coat, all red. It’s an image he’ll never scrub away from the back of his eyelids, no matter how hard he tried.

Ghostbur is the only one who doesn’t seem to register what he meant, though, and he continues. “Okay then, Tommy, can you just, stand over there, next to - oh, Tubbo’s not here. Could you stand next to Ranboo then? Ranboo, you can be Tubbo today.”

Tommy freezes at this. Tubbo wasn’t here, because he couldn’t be, because he was six feet under a tree somewhere in this very space, next to a bench and a jukebox, because Tommy had put him there. Tubbo was missing, and they overlooked it now, sure - but he had been gone for weeks, and they didn’t _notice_? It’s an incredulous thought he has momentarily, before he robotically shifted over to Ranboo, who looked incredibly nervous, as he usually did.

“I’ll just… be me.” He says, brokenly. Tommy will be Tommy, no matter what, because ultimately it didn’t matter how they took him apart, piece by piece, they’d all condemn him the same way. Tommy will be Tommy, in the way that Tommy and Tubbo were once inseparable, and now they are apart in a way he’ll never come back from - not the way he could then, cracks in their friendship post-exile seemingly irreparable in their width, but fixable all the same, if they had the time. But they didn’t, and Tommy and Tubbo split once, bitterly, and then again, suddenly, and now, if the analogy sticks, Tommy is Tommy and always will be, but now he’s falling apart irreparably fixable too. 

They continue the script. Ghostbur butchers the lines, not in that he tells them wrong, but he says them wrongly, his airy voice the wrong pitch, hastily rushing through a plagiarized version of what had played out once, so many months before.

Phil grimances throughout the whole ordeal. Ranboo watches on in what looks to be horror, his mouth agape at the scene. Tommy’s face remains blank, betraying nothing of his thoughts. 

Phil is called over. He delivers his line, _what are you doing_ , but with a lit in his voice that sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. Or cry. Tommy feels like doing both, but they both play their roles, and stay silent for it. Ghostbur continues on with more bravado, his voice raising in volume to make up for the lack of… Wilbur-ness, in quality. It’s hilarious to watch, but in the same manner that watching the TNT drop onto L’manberg endlessly was hilarious. A mistake given form.

“There’s a thing that a traitor once said - hey, that’s you Eret!” Ghostbur’s voice rises, cheerfully, and the blow lands. Eret turns their head to the side, silently, and Ghostbur continues obliviously on. “There’s a thing that a traitor once said, that it was not ever meant to happen.” He pauses, and looks at their faces, realization obviously dawning, before backpedaling rapidly. “I mean, um, it was never meant to be!”

It was never meant to be. A line first spoke by a traitor, sure, but perpetuated down a line of those like him in all intents and purposes. Wilbur, in his press of a button, Niki, in the flame of her torch, Techno, in his Wither-given revenge. Tommy, once, in his reversion of the phrase. He thinks he might’ve been the only person to try and undo its legacy. Of course, it was followed by the explosion of L’manberg, so he’s not sure how much weight it holds, these days.

Ghostbur rambles on, more frantically this time, _kill me, Philza, Wilbur - I mean, I’m a bad man, a bad bad man-”_ ( _we’re the bad guys, tommy, don’t you see?_ The trenchcoat shifts as Wilbur turns to him, a desperate, hopeless look in his eyes, and he grips Tommy by the shoulders. _That’s not true!_ Tommy had argued right back, back then when he still had hope, when he still believed it. But Techno had offered the alternative in a story about Theseus and heroism, and while he’s terrified of becoming the bad guy, being a hero sounds worse, somehow, and now neither seems good.

He knows how both of those stories would end, theoretically. In one, he embraces the selfishness they all acclaim him for - or he doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter, because he is branded a villain all the same. And while villains are allowed to do what they want in the form of the narrative, what they want hurts others, and ultimately, a villain is made to be defeated. On the other hand, Theseus is killed by the very man he thought he could rely on, so he’s not sure how much merit he should grant Greek myths in that department, but in either case there are no happy endings. In his case, there is no happy ending, either, but at least, he wants to be able to choose the tragic conclusion. He doesn’t want to grant it to Phil, or Techno, or Dream to decide, because then he’s lost the last thing he could have autonomy over.) 

Ghostbur pauses. “Phil, actually, maybe we need something else? Is there anything we’re missing?” There’s a desperate quality in the sound of his voice, somewhere, and Tommy’s not sure if he picked it up right, because Phil doesn’t react, nor Eret or Ranboo, but…

Phil shifts awkwardly. “Is there something that’d help?” He tries, placatingly, and Ghostbur flickers erratically. “I want Friend - no wait, Friend’s dead, do I have any other lines? No, no, I don’t - I pressed the button… wait, I change my mind - Phil, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to die, Phil.”

“But you’re going to come back.” There’s a question in that line, somewhere.

“No, no, I don’t want Wilbur to come back. I’m not him, I'm not Wilbur.”

Phil hesitates, like he thinks that’s untrue. Ghostbur had always been an in-between for all of them, an intermediary of Wilbur being dead, and Wilbur. But Tommy acknowledges the truth in that statement. Ghostbur wasn’t Wilbur in many, many ways. Ghostbur wasn’t any better, nor worse, but they were definitely two different personalities. It’s a lesson he learned the hard way, in Logsteadshire, because no amount of begging would bring any amount of Wilbur back. So when Ghostbur asks, “Tommy, do you want Wilbur back? You said you did, once.” Tommy hesitates. 

He says instead, “Wilbur wasn’t very… ( _nice, he wasn’t the best, he was still my brother, I still loved him but he was terrifying in the way he was so willing to tear himself to shreds and everything around him in blast radius, he was frightening in the way he slipped through my fingers like sand, and I couldn’t stop him for it, I missed him so much, I miss him now, but I want the Wilbur I had called Wilby once, and you’re not going to be able to bring him back-_ )... poggers,” he chokes out. It’s the closest he’ll ever get to confessing, and while Phil might laugh at the choice in words, it’s the best he can do.

And so, Phil grips the sword, the same shimmering diamond blade as before. Phil didn’t hesitate before, and he doesn’t now. Ghostbut disappears within two swings of the blade.

He doesn’t come back.

Tommy thinks he’s breathing, but he’s not entirely sure. There’s a motion in his lungs, but he thinks it’s just the air escaping them, and he’s forgotten to inhale, in their stead. Then, there’s a rage, welling up from deep, deep within the craterous hole inside him, a rage that hadn’t been there for a while, but fills his body with the heat of adrenaline all the same, the same rage that had fueled him in every battle before, in every accusation and argument, the same rage that had fueled him if only for a little longer, to dig a hole under a tree before finally giving way to the emptiness instead, for the last time. It’s hot, fiery and familiar, and he can’t help himself when he lunges at Phil, bare-handed and angry. It doesn’t last long though, as Ghostbur shows up soon after, with disappointing news on hand (and he can’t help but feel relieved, that he hadn;t lost Ghostbur too)

In conclusion, the revival fails. Phil doesn’t get his son back, and while it’s not the most pleasant outcome, it’s better than the worst one. Tommy feels relieved, at the least, and begins to trek back to Pogtopia. They still have the coat, and that’s okay, because Tommy doesn’t need the coat anymore. He doesn’t need anything, because he has nothing, and now, nothing can be taken from him, and he is still cold, no matter what. It’s alright, those things. He’s cold, and lonely, and he has nothing, but it won’t last long. He’s not going to be around forever, after all.

(a part of tommy, the vindictive one that never leaves, ever, the endless stoked fire within him that demands recompense in any manner possible, viciously crows over the loss. Wilbur Soot did not get a happy ending. Tubbo Underscore did not get a happy ending. They faced their direct end at the hands of the very man himself - so In what world, should Phil get a happy one?

a smaller voice in Tommy's head, the one he has a hard time shutting up, these days, whispers that he should’ve asked Philza to do the same for him. What greater irony, would it be, for Phil to be so awful at keeping his own family together, that he becomes their own ruin. Because if Phil wants to run off with Techno so bad, Tommy will let him. He will, and he won’t say anything about it - but the expression Phil’d make if he asked would be hilarious, the same way Wilbur begging for death was, the same way that Dream watching him on top of those obsidian grids at him was, in the same way that Tubbo had weakly gripped onto his shirt, eyes glassy with tears, face marred with pain, was. And _oh_ , does he want to do onto others what they have done to him. But the truth of the matter is, it will never work out for him. Never had, before. 

So he keeps his death out of Dream’s hands, out of Techno’s and out of Phil’s. It’s not their conclusion to write, anway.)

  
  
  


12.

He finds Jack Manifold before the man finds him.

It’s not clear at first, who he’s talking to, but when he draws nearer, he can make out familiar long hair, lashes and buns, and he realizes it’s Niki. They’re talking, and their expressions don’t say much, what with Jack’s back facing him, and Niki’s stone cold face, but in the firelight of the torch Niki holds, her eyes look the same they did then, when she had shouted at him before Doomsday, a woman scorned and unheard, and then again, glowing in the light of the fire that had spread across L’manberg’s last tree. It’s a vicious resoluteness, somewhat vindictive and conniving, and when Jack gestures to him, unknowingly, it clicks.

When Jack comes back, he’s keely aware of the sword in Jack’s hand. Now, he understands its presence.

“You know,” he starts, suddenly, and Jack flinches at the surprising noise. He knows he doesn’t sound too good to listen to these days, but this time, he feels it’s warranted. Out of braver, or purposeful stupidity, he’ll never know, but he steps closer. Jack’s hand is on the hilt of his sword and he eyes it.

“If you kill me now, no one’s going to find me for weeks.” He says flatly, and watches as Jack freezes in place. He continues, bitterly. “They might never find me at all. I’ll rot here, alone. Forgotten.” He stops. “ _Missing_ ,” he hisses, vindictively almost, and watches as the word makes its way into Jack’s recognition, and the man steps back. He steps closer, again.

“Go on,” he whispers. Jack is facing him, and his mouth is open, and he might’ve said something, but there is a buzzing in Tommy’s ears so loud that he can’t even hear himself. The sword glimmers in the darkness of the ravine, and he knows Jack’s not going to take up the challenge, in the way he trembles, out of rage or fear, Tommy will never know, because whatever it is, is hidden behind the glasses he always wears, and his grip is wrong on his sword. 

It’s almost disappointing. 

“Get out.” He says, roughly. His eyes follow Jack out into the woods. He stays there, lingering, in the moments after.

(Tommy can’t understand it, but at the same time, he definitely does, the idea that Niki would want to kill him. The idea that Phil could, that Techno could, that Wilbur would risk it, that Tubbo, even, would call him a liability and banish him too. The truth of the matter is this: Tommy is hard to love, and even harder to forgive. He is unapologetic about everything, he is brash, loud and annoying, but he cares. He cares a lot, a little too much, and he’s given everything to be taken away, and they blame him, and maybe they’re right, but they punish him wrong, and nobody learns.

Tommy is hard to love, and harder to forgive, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve love. What it does mean, though, is that by the time anyone else realises that, it’s too late.)




Ultimately, it starts with him setting a house aflame, and it ends with his own on fire. 

But for Tommy, it starts sooner than that. He spends those long cold nights in Pogtopia, after Wilbur’s failed resurrection. He doesn’t see Phil or Ghostbur, nor his jacket, afterwards. They know where he is now, but they don’t come back. He’s sure they won’t. (And if they did, they would be far too late by then. Phil is often too late, for many things. Phil was too late to Wilbur’s decline, too late to stop Wilbur, too late for Tommy, and now, he’ll be too late for this, too.)

But it’s Ghostbur’s words that ring in his head, the weeks after. _You can stand next to Tubbo - oh wait, he’s not here._ No matter what, he can’t wipe those words from his mind. It’s so quiet in Pogtopia, and so it is all he hears.

_Next to Tubbo_. He was always next to Tubbo, once. It was always them, together, them against the world. And in one world, he’s still with Tubbo. Their relationship might still be dragging over those rocks, a hastily crafted ship on harsh shores, but they’d have the time to fix it nonetheless. In this world, they live, together, and they live together in a house made by Tubbo, occupied by Tommy, and they might struggle to move forward from ruination, but they take their little steps. They take their time, and they try to progress with the weight of the world upon them. In this world, they might die, or they might not, but they’ll ultimately die together.

_Tubbo’s not here_. He was always next to Tubbo, once. It was always them, together, them against the world. In this world, though, Tommy makes a mistake. He makes many, and he knows that, and everyone knows that, but it’s this one that counts. The mistake is that he doesn’t move fast enough, still frozen in his own body, still helpless and useless and stuck on the shores of Logsteadshire, on the rocks of old L’manberg, still surrounded by withers and rockets and techno taunting him. He doesn’t move, and it should have cost him. It doesn’t.

In this world, it is Tommy, alone. Tommy, without Tubbo, and Tubbo, who will never come back. Tubbo, who will never come back, because he is dead. Because Tommy buried him, under the tree, next to the bench and the jukebox, who buried him without fanfare, without music. It’s a silent affair, and unintentionally, a secret. No one will mourn him because no one knows, because he can’t break the news, because if he does, he’ll break too. Because in this world, the mistake is that he lives.

He comes back, a week later, frantically when it dawns on him, because nobody else knew about Tubbo, and if Tommy forgot, then nobody else would know to miss him. Tommy owes it to him, anyway, because it’s him that Tubbo died for, him who caused it. He brings the roses and the marigolds, uprooted from the apiary, and everything he wants to say, buried deep in his heart. It’s been weeks, since he’d left the bench and the tree, and it’s weeks after that he returns.

What he returns to is his house destroyed, its remains covered in flaming netherrack, a chest in the middle, and it’s when he finds careless footprints impressed on the soil under the tree, right atop where they shouldn’t be, where they wouldn’t be if anyone else knew, where Tubbo wouldn’t be if Tommy hadn’t put him there in two steps, it’s then that he falls to his knees, and falls apart. 

  
  


When he collects himself, he finds a compass in a chest in the center, and a note, with a smiley face.

  
  


The compass has something engraved on the back. He feels it with his fingers, when he grips it too tight, so he flips it over. It reads: “Your Discs” and all he can think is that the discs have become a leash that he is led by, endlessly. The discs have become a lasso, a lasso that has dragged everything away from him, and now, it becomes the rope that Dream wants him to throw himself off by.

When he reads the note though, he reads it again to make sure his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him, and reads a third time, for good measure. “Come see me, on Wednesday. You and Tubbo. ALONE.”

  
  


You and Tubbo. Alone. You. Tubbo. Alone. Tubbo, you, alone. Tubbo, you. You, alone. You. Alone. 

You’re alone.

  
  
  


He takes the compass, with shaking cold hands and burning, wet eyes, and he throws it into the crater of L’manberg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you didn't see that one coming, huh? Huh???
> 
> (... mayb e that's a little out of character. a "little". okay but this is my fic and i think its Cool of tommy to do that, so i wrote it in. might edit later though haha im a coward with the backbone of a chocolate eclair and it shows sometimes, huh?)
> 
> Edit: Two things  
> \- new fav bookmark: "My sobbing is immeasurable and my day is spent in fear :(" yes YES  
> \- dream did not dig up tubbo. tubbo is still ??? to all of them, and he is still there. the footprints symbolize that nobody knows what theyve just walked over. imma edit the last chappy a bit because i dont think i made it clear enough...
> 
> Let me know what your favorite lines were in the comments! or if you really liked something in particular, i use em comments for outlining the next chapter mwahaha... speaking of the next chapter.... HHHHHHHHhow am i going to write it,, L
> 
> EDIT 1/24: if you want, in the comments, a) what's your favorite line? (akjdhlkjsh i just wanna know haha) and *more importantly* b) who do you wanna see talk to tommy in the next chapter? it is... the conclusion after all....
> 
> Edit 3 1/27: minor changes, like grammar. don't mind me! But also, the next chapter's been... drafted out, to say the least :]
> 
> Edit 2:  
> " -and them i’m going to hunt Tubbo down-"  
> "What?" Tommy freezes, at the sound of Tubbo's name - and something clicks. Oh. _Oh_.  
> "You don't know."  
> Dream pauses, and turns to stare, slowly. The mask glimmers coldly in the faint lighting of the room. "What?"  
> Something bubbles up in his chest. It's manic, vicious in its surety, depressing in its disparity, and hot shame like lava in his veins, helium lungs that lifts him up. He laughs, because he won't cry, but more because Dream, because -  
> "You, you don't _know_!"
> 
> ... next chapter... coming soon.

**Author's Note:**

> gimme yo comments 👀
> 
> imma be fixing this whole thing up real soon i just wanted to put this out here haha,,, hhh all i write is pain


End file.
